Gothic: a silver ghost town turned research station

A few miles up the valley from Crested Butte sits Gothic, a cluster of old buildings with two very different lives.

Gothic began around 1879 when prospectors rushed in after reports of silver near Gothic Mountain. A town went up fast, with hundreds of people. But the silver did not last, the miners moved on, and harsh winters wore the empty buildings down. By the 1920s Gothic was a ghost town. Then it got a second life: in 1928, Dr. John C. Johnson of Western State College and fellow biologists founded the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory at Gothic, turning the abandoned camp into a high-altitude field station where scientists and students study mountain plants, animals, and climate. Some of that research has run for decades.

Why this is worth knowing: Gothic shows the full arc of a Colorado mining camp, boom, bust, and an unexpected revival, all in one small place. It is still an active research site and a community, so visitors are guests rather than free to roam old buildings.

For the documented history of Gothic and its mining past, History Colorado is a good starting point, and the surrounding public land lies within the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forest.